post - Celine Kayo

this town is running out of spaces that aren’tstained with vignettes of you. there's bruises in my visioneverywhere i look:the first kiss between the pillars,your old school field,our makeshift lovers’ lane in a gravel turnout. i try to keep you at bay but you are always thereon the backs of my eyelids your face is a slit to my throat, your laugh a razor bladeleaves me folding into myself like origami until i can’t get any smaller

the most important thing i’ve learned in twenty-one years:sunrises are bullshit,that people always say it’s new beginnings, but i’ve been around longenough to know this is more like an old ending.if i pray loud enough do you think God will let me turn off the daylight?it’s just that the last time we kissed we were soaked in pitch black,your piano fingers planted candles in the cracks of my spine, so now i prefer light that i can kill with my own breath(sorry Father i’m up so late but after this i’ll practise staying asleep)

you were an exercise in:shutting off our heartsletting our hands do the talkingwaiting for the other to exhale first while the room turned blue around usdidn't we promise to be transparent? the day you became indian ink,i fumbled through the dark until a nail drove through my flesh. had you known the smokier the poetry, the harder it is to fall out of love?is that why you forgot to say goodbye? how can you have a clean break when you’ve broken your fingersmaking something fake feel real?

this is how I know i’m caught out at sea again:body torn open by salt water grating on my soaked-paper skin, andnone of the waves are breaking in the right direction, andi try paddling back to shore, but i’m kicking and kicking, andall the water does is just stay still.

Contributor's Note

Life takes a lot out of Celine Kayo, but she likes to think she takes a lot of life too. She's known for always getting her eyeliner even and for being a bit of an oxymoron (but mostly moron). She has previously appeared in Re-Draft.